I/O Faculty

In order to maintain a practitioner-scholar model, our faculty engage in a wide range of research activities, publish, present at professional conferences and encourage participation in their research teams. All have engaged in pro-bono consultancies with our students in the local area and enjoy the assistance of a strong alumni network for more distant client-based projects.

Benjamin Biermeier-Hanson is an Assistant Professor. Prior to his time at Radford he worked as a faculty member at Albion College and in R&D at Denison Consulting. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Wayne State University and his B.A. from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. His current research interests revolve around leadership, organizational culture, and the interaction between the two. Recent projects have examined leader-culture fit and the effect of subcultures within organizations. Other research interests include the effect of nepotism on non-family bystanders, and gendered differences in cultural perceptions. His teaching interests encompass most I/O topics with an additional interest in teaching methods and statistics courses.

Jay Caughron is an Associate Professor who received his Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Oklahoma and his B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. He has worked on grants from the Department of Defense, National Institute of Health, and National Science Foundation investigating leadership and ethical decision-making in a variety of contexts. Dr. Caughron’s research interests include workplace aggression, leadership, computerized applicant screening procedures, and ethical decision-making. His teaching interests include the foundations of I/O psychology, leadership, ethics and psychometrics.

Nicole Petersen is an Assistant Professor. She received her M.A and Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Bowling Green State University and her B.A. in Psychology from Coe College. Her research interests include examining ways personality and job attitudes impact employee performance, basic issues in selection, abusive supervision, and understanding the stressor-strain relationship in high risk occupations. At the master’s level, she primarily teaches courses on the “I” side of I-O psychology, including employee selection and performance management.

Nora Reilly is a Professor with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology (Dartmouth College) and a B.A. from Stonehill College. She retrained as an Organizational Social Psychologist at Colorado State University and taught at Washington State University for several years. Her research interests include the study of stigmatizing conditions, both overt and covert, that affect employment decisions with a particular focus on recently returned veterans. She is also engaged in the study of quality of work life. She is particularly interested in teaching organization development interventions and assessment. She is actively involved in SIOP’s Education and Training subcommittees: one successfully fostered approval of full membership in the Society for terminal master’s students and another is now strengthening internship connections with industry.